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Farmers' data rights - Some findings

Presentation prepared for CTA, for the CTA/AgriCord/PAFO workshop on "Building the next generation of farmers
Supporting capacity-development of African Farmers Organisations through improved Policies, Technologies and Capabilities", Brussels, 6-7 November 2018 .

4.
Rights affect all streams of data from / to farm
• First, farmers are challenged to gain
access to relevant data and services
provided by other actors (so called
‘imported data’).
• Second, sharing their own data
(‘exported data’) opens farmers up to
potential risks.
Data rights affect both types of
challenge.
Maru, A. et al. Digital and Data-Driven Agriculture: Harnessing the Power of Data
for Smallholders. F1000Research, 2018. https://f1000research.com/documents/7-525

5.
Ownership: protection / obstacle
Business sensitivity vs. social responsibility
E.g. farm data:
Farmers are entrepreneurs and their competitiveness should not be
harmed by sharing business-sensitive data
BUT farmers have a key role and responsibility towards society in providing
essential tracking data for food safety, sustainability of production, land use
>> farm data should be considered as any other business data and the same
legal data protection should apply,
>> BUT ownership and rights-based approaches can undermine sharing and
cooperation and clog the flow of data

6.
Contractual approach: US and EU Codes of conduct
• Focus on contracts
• Farmers continue to be the owners of
non-aggregated farm data
• Responsibility of service providers to
inform farmers that their data are being
collected, and how they are used; do
nothing without the consent of farmers
• It is unclear who owns the aggregated
data and what rights that ownership im
plies
• Focus on agreements
• Originator continues to be the
owner of the data and can
determine who can access data and
use it
• Right to know the purpose of
data collection and sharing
• right of the originators to benefit
from their data and to retrieve
their data down the line
Simone van der Burg. Framing the issues; ethical, legal and policy aspects of data sharing affecting farmers. Presented at
the Bonn meeting, July 2018.

7.
Benefit sharing, transparency, social responsibility
This requires fair data governance...
Farmers share data
farmers have access to
better data and services
service providers and
govt reuse farmers' data
to build better services
data is shared along the
agri-food value chain
traceability,
accountability
societal goals, SDGs
data used only
for agreed
purposes
trust
data is shared also
by other actors

8.
Main governance recommendations so far
1. Self-regulatory governance:
trust centers and self-governed platforms at different levels, across the agri-food value
chain - social responsibility mechanisms (certifications), benefit sharing mechanisms,
business models that enable equitable data flows
2. Key role of aggregations of farmers and creation of "data cooperatives" for data
shepherding and collective negotiation of data rights
3. National and international policies, international agreements and treaties that enable
fair data flows and counter power imbalances
4. Evaluate the application of existing relevant law (privacy, business data,
database copyright), avoid new specific laws
5. Governance models that enable “equitable transactions” (a balance of individual
interests in transactions, guided by the overarching societal goal.

9.
Collective action vision document
"We believe that a crucial issue is the balance between legal assertions
of data ownership and the enabling of fair and equitable data sharing
and exchange that benefits farmers and, at the same time, supports
the efficiency of agri-food systems."
"The core of our vision for the collective action is that farmers can be
empowered to harness data-driven agriculture through inclusive data
ecosystems that nurture equitable sharing, exchange and use of data
and information by all and for all participants in agri-food value chains,
with special consideration of smallholder farmers, the most vulnerable
to inequitable data flows."

10.
Thank you!
For more info
valeria.pesce@gfar.net
CTA/AgriCord/PAFO - Building the next generation of farmers
Supporting capacity-development of African Farmers Organisations
through improved Policies, Technologies and Capabilities
Brussels, 6-7 November 2018